D. Maxim

"Wait a minute!" I hear him say from beyond the door, wherever that is.

He comes back in, brings a chair, the two other men strip my clothes off me, tie me to the chair and put a bindfoild and gag on me.

"There!", he says, "That ought to do it!"

"This is getting bad,"  I think.

He looks at me.  I look away.  He grabs my chin and forces my face to where I have to look at him.  I close my eyes.  He slaps me.
“Keep your eyes open!”  He says.
I comply.
“What are you!”   He yells.
“What do you mean?” I reply.
“What are you!”  He yells louder.

It’s Jacques that goes forward to meet them.  The men, in camouflage fatigues, brush right by him.  He’s saying “I have authorization by the Israeli Antiquities . . . “

It was a hallway -- a corridor -- couldn't see the walls, but it was nonetheless a corridor -- couldn't move left or right, just straight ahead.

Then ended.

In the reddish landscape.  Just POP!

Then there they were:  Chloe and Ralph and  Brian and Tom and Dick and Harry and Ahmed and Raphael and Jacques.

Ralph?

“It’s a door!” I say, “A door upstairs!  How’d that happen?

Well, I start to tell my story.  Cars rush up to us, lights flashing.  Men get out, bullhorn in one’s hand and guns in the hands of others.

Wow, the way things happen.  So Raphael knows some people.  He’s been around.  He’s a surprising surprise.  Quite the cosmopolitan.  He has been helpful.
We are looking over the digs when men come up and talk with Jacques.  Jacques comes over with them.  They have uniforms on.

“Mon Dieu!” Raphael exclaimed.
“What is it?”
“La Mer Morte.”
”The Dead Sea?”  Chloe asked.
“Quite so,” Raphael said emphatically.  “Look at those!!  It’s a total row of doors!”
“Yes,” I said.
Raphael moved closer to inspect.

“We were nothing too.”
“Nothing, too.”
“Nothing too.”
“But you’re not nothing.”
“Nothing exists in the Nothing.”
“Okay,” I said, “let me show you.”  And I pulled the door out of my pocket.

We sit down at Raphael’s restaurant, at a sidewalk table.
“Won’t somebody notice “Pierre” there?”  Asks Chloe.

“Raff!” shouts the sales clerk, “Comment allez vous?”
“Tres bien,” Raphael replies, “Est-ce que tu connais mes amis?”
“Un peu. Porquois ils et tu entre sans habiillement?”
“Long story,” Raphael replies.
Then he turns to me.

Nobody’s watching as I look around to see if anybody’s watching.  There’s the door.  Here I am.  There’s everybody else. 

“That is quite all right,” Chloe replies, “I think we should consider other matters.”

This is an Unexpected Bump for Sure

by D. Maxim

Hey!  Says Raphael, How come people are looking for you?

I really don’t know – you’d have to ask them.

I asked one guy once and he looked at me in such a way that I never asked the question again.

Did he say anything?

What the?

The clothes!  The clothes!

The clothes.

We’re naked!

Well, here’s what I did.  I decided there’d be eight doors.  Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti Do

An octave of doors.

It was morning.  Cloey got up, went into the bathroom.  I heard the shower running.  Shower turned off.

Morning had broken.

Saw her standing there.

"What's it like outside?" she asked.

"Total bright sun -- something like a desert."

"Oh yeah."

"You know," she said, struggling with the granola bar wrapper, "if they made things easier to open, I know a lot of people who would be very happy"

“Where you been?”

“At a dock.”

“Are you sick?”

Bop!

A dock!

The best laid plans of mice and men.

Talk about gangin agley!